The best I can do is to give it a range of four months to a year. SEO should show results within 6 to 12 months. By results we mean a measurable increase in traffic and associated leads or conversions. This does not necessarily mean that you have reached your goal at this point, but any company investing in SEO should expect to see progress within this timeframe.
Many SEO companies will tell you that it takes 4-6 months to start seeing results. This is generally correct, but keep in mind that this is when you start to see results, and SEO results grow over time. The results you get at 6 months should be considerably less than the results you get at 12 months. At some point, you may see your results decrease, and then it may be a matter of maintaining results rather than growing them.
That's why you should only hire SEO companies or SEO professionals who focus on results, rather than products. Continued addition of content and technical aspects of SEO such as link building are important during this month to keep the SEO momentum moving. So if you ask your local SEO "expert" how long it will take to see results with them and they say something like "6 months minimum or more from the start, proceed with caution". This obviously demonstrates the importance of ongoing local optimisation and how important it is to see local search as an ongoing project rather than a one-off deal.
In a competitive industry for websites that have had little work done on them, 50 percent of local search experts agree that significant local rankings can be achieved in 3-6 months. However, this may have something to do with the fact that most of the knowledge, focus and discussion about local SEO is based on Google, due to its dominance in the search market. There is no doubt that if Bing or Yahoo were to gain more market share, this would be reflected in a change in local SEO practices. To understand the timing of an SEO strategy, it is easiest to look at it month by month through an SEO timeline.
The SEO results your business is looking for (local SEO, national SEO, global SEO) will influence the types of SEO techniques you perform on your site. Now that you know how long it takes for SEO to work and want to reap the benefits of SEO including increased website traffic, improved brand awareness, and amplified revenue, WebFX can help.
